


Flock Together

by aeonii



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: 90's references out the yang, Angst, Drinking, Excessive Swearing, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Mechanic!Eren, Multi, Slow Burn, Smoking, Successful!Marco, Tortured Artist!Jean, bc Jean's a whiny lil' shit, idiots failing at polyamory, probably excessively, understandably bc his life is a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-27 01:01:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8381764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeonii/pseuds/aeonii
Summary: Jean Kirschtein, 22 years old. Unemployed. College flunkie. Officially homeless now. Possibly depressed. Owner of a beat up Renault that’s older than me. And all of my worldly possessions fit into two cardboard boxes and a duffel bag.Ah, the epitome of success.AKA The one where Jean returns to his hometown and tries to get his shit together, ends up in a love triangle instead.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this way back in like 2013 for my own personal amusement. Then life happened and it got put on the back burner, eventually I forgot about it and drifted from the SnK fandom and this hot mess never got to see the light of day (computer screen??) But! I was going through my old word documents and found this old thing, remembered how much I love this AU. It’s my precious, ugly child that only a mother could love. So I decided to revamp it, y’know? Flesh some things out, polish up the awkward transitions, make it presentable. Aaaand inevitably it spiraled out of control, turned into a monster, and ruined my life.
> 
> It was SUPPOSED to be a jeanmarco fic. I had an entire 15 chapter outline planned out to the very last detail. It was gonna be B-E-A-U-TIFUL! Somehow it turned into a threesome, my outline became irrelevant, I had to scrap a bunch of character arcs, halfway through outlining and an emotional breakdown later I said “Fuck it! I’m just gonna wing it” and now I have no idea what I’m doing. All because I’m a sucker for erejeanmarco.
> 
> Anyway, this is gonna be slow burn yo. Like, a snail coated in molasses climbing up an 87 degree incline slow. Seriously, the first 3 chapters are just Jean angsting all over the place. It’s pitiful. 
> 
> TLDR: I’m in way over my head. My author’s notes are way too long. Other characters won’t even become relevant for 3-4 chapters. I hope you like sarcastic bitch baby Jean ‘cos that’s the first 3 chapters in a nutshell.

Some dude once said, “Beginnings are always messy.” Granted, messy is putting the current situation _very_ lightly, but I feel like this applies to me.

Technically this isn’t a real beginning since I’ve been living for a decent amount of time, but I figure this isn’t a bad place to start considering things can only go up from here. “Here” is a shitty Tuesday afternoon, sitting in my car, forehead pressed against the steering wheel, and crying over a sad song on the radio that’s hitting just a lil’ bit too close to home.

Yep, that’s right. Jean Kirschtein, 22 years old. Unemployed. College flunkie. Officially homeless now. Possibly depressed. Owner of a beat up Renault that’s older than me. Complete with a cassette player, an engine that stalls 80% of the time, a busted air conditioner, and three windows that you have to manually roll down. Note, three windows, because my prick of a roommate threw a brick at my car yesterday. And all of my worldly possessions fit into two cardboard boxes and a duffel bag.

Ah, the epitome of success.

The only thing that could make it worse is if my girlfriend broke up with me, but I never had a girlfriend to begin with.

I never thought the day would come when I cried over to the same song all the people I hated in middle school angsted to, but here I am. I have officially hit rock bottom.

If you were trying to psychoanalyze me you could say it all started about four or five years ago when my old man put a hand on my shoulder and said, “Son, one day you’re going to take up the family business.” Family business being a health clinic. Of all the things, it had to be a health clinic. I honestly would have taken morticians over that. At least they can’t potentially kill someone.

Teen-me happened to be going through an embarrassingly intense Lord of the Rings phase at the time, and I remember relating to Frodo Baggins way more than I was comfortable with in that moment. It was like I was the chosen one and everyone had their own plans for me, but no asked me what _I_ wanted because I was just a kid and “kids don’t know what they want.” I knew what I didn’t want though. I didn’t want the responsibility of someone else’s life in my hands. I didn’t want adults telling me they knew best, acting like they understood myself better than I did. I didn’t want to save the goddamn kingdom. The kingdom could go fuck itself for all I cared.

So of course I did what any rebellious 17 year-old would do in that situation and responded with, “Fuck you, dad! I wanna be an artist!”

It was a great plan, really.

Until he threatened to not pay for my college education if I went for anything other than med-school. I settled for the next best thing, getting as far away as I could. That landed me 2,000 miles away from home in a prestigious school filled with hoity toity bastards, but no one cared as long as it was an ivy league.

I made it three and a half years before cracking under the pressure. And because I’m an idiot, I neglected to mention it to my parents.

I was able to keep up the charade for a while, lying profusely to my mom during our weekly phone calls, finding a roommate on craigslist, picking up a part time job to cover my half of the rent for an apartment so run down it was one step above the projects out in Compton. At this rate I could’ve kept it up for at least a year without anyone finding out, right?

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

You see, the longer you put things off, the harder it becomes to deal with them. It turns into this cycle of guilt. Yeah, I mean, there’s fear and procrastination and panic and a little bit of productivity and some self pity - okay there’s a fuckton of self pity - but the guilt is what gets to you. You’re so ashamed of your fuck ups that you just kinda sweep it under the rug and pretend the huge bump in the middle of your floor doesn’t exist, which makes you feel even more guilty. You know that it’s there and ignoring it won’t make it go away, but every single day you’re sweeping more stuff under the rug and it gets bigger and bigger to the point where there is literally so much shit under your rug that the mere thought of cleaning it makes you want to cry.

So, yeah, I done fucked up.

The never-ending cycle of guilt caused me to fall into a bout of intense self loathing. Some would go as far to say I was depressed, but I never got around to seeing a psychiatrist (re: I’m too broke to go to the doctor for anything short of death). I’m a lot of bad things, but I’m not going to be one of those people who diagnoses themselves with a mental disorder without ever seeing a professional. That’s like a completely new level of fucked up.

Not only did I fail at attending college, but I also stopped going to work most days in favor of becoming one with my bed and hoping my life would blur together until I couldn’t tell the difference between Sunday and Wednesday. My boss sent me a text message telling me not to bother coming in anymore. It was like a poorly worded break up text more than anything else.

Not having a job led to not being able to pay the rent which led to my roommate taking my bedroom door off of its hinges at the crack of dawn and throwing most of my belongings out the window. Honestly, I shouldn’t have been so surprised by this act of otherworldly douchebaggery, what with the guy’s name being Chaz and all.

Chaz’s prized possession is a $10 hookah he bought off a homeless man loitering outside the sketchiest thrift store in California, nay, America. Chaz thinks Limp Bizkit is a good band and puts spray cheese on _everything_. Chaz is a piece of shit.

Chaz threw a brick at my car. I don’t know why, I figure it’s just because he could. That guy never liked me, said my hair cut gave him “bad vibes” or whatever those fake Buddhists call it these days. It was quite the spectacle to the neighbors. I think some of the moms even started a book club about me.

Long story short, my life has spiraled downward at an exponential rate and it is entirely my own fault, which leads to my current predicament: bawling my eyes with _Iris_ by the Goo Goo Dolls as my own personal background music.

At some point I manage to stop crying and start driving. I pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts, all eleven of them. I know it’s illegal to talk on your phone while driving, safety hazard and all, but fuck the police.

Before I even notice, I’m calling my mom. She’d always been the one I called whenever I majorly fucked up, why would this time be any different? It’s almost a conditioned response to stress by now.

I hold my breath. I don’t know why I’m holding my breath, probably subconsciously trying to suffocate myself. This is a stupid idea. I should hang up. I am, by legal standards, an adult. I have a solid four years of adulting under my belt. I can handle my problems by myself. I don’t have to call mommy to come bail me out. I-

“Hello?” Her voice is laced with uncertainty. That makes sense seeing as I have yet to say something. C’mon Jean, English, words, do the thing.

“...Hey mom.” It comes out like a question, with the y’s dragged out. Fantastic. That doesn’t sound suspicious at all. Nope.

“Jean, honey, is something wrong?”

“No!” I wince at my own voice before taking a deep breath. “No. Nothing’s wrong it’s just- uh I was thinking about maybe coming home for a while? I mean, if that’s alright with you.”

“Of course it’s fine. You have not called in a while,” she says in a disapproving tone. I can practically feel her glare from the other side of the country. “I’ve missed you.” Her voice softens, as if she’s smiling to herself. For a moment I’m lured into a false sense of security. The way she talks feels warm. Comfortable. It brings back the happier memories of my childhood, when she made me omelets on rainy days, when she bought me those huge crayola sets for my birthdays and told me to be the next Monet, when she took me to the park and didn’t make a disgusted face every time I picked up all sorts of things (bugs, mostly) and brought them back to her. Instead, she would laugh, tell me how proud she was of her little man.

I let out a nervous chuckle and think, maybe I can get away with this. Maybe it won’t turn out as bad as I thought. I’m the man. I spent the better part of three years pulling all-nighters at the last minute to finish college papers. I can bullshit my way through anything. Hell yeah. “Yeah. I miss you too.”

Then there’s a pause on the other line. I can make out a quiet noise of shuffling paper and a short hum. Short hums are bad news. Short hums are skeptical hums. Short hums are for hiding bad grades and eating candy before dinner and saying I’m going to a friend’s house to study and talking about girls. “But… are you not in the middle of the school year? It is nearly May. You have final exams in a few weeks, yes?”

Shit.

This was the moment I’d been trying to brace myself for in the past few months. I had no friends’ couches to crash on on account of having no friends. I stopped getting my financial aid a semester ago. There was no possible way to dig myself out of the hole I managed to get myself into and sure as hell, no one else was going to help me out. Well, no one besides my family that is, reluctantly at that. And how pathetic is that? That I talked so big about how I was going to get out of my godforsaken hometown and never look back. I was going to be an artist, be successful, be happy without having to rely on anyone else. Now, I’m up to my neck in crippling student loan debt with nothing to show for it and I’ve got no other options left besides running back to the place I hate filled with people I hate and expectations I hate and try not to choke on the taste of my own failures.

I had a speech, you know? Something I practiced in front of the mirror and recited over and over in my head until I finally fell asleep. Man, I fucking lived and breathed this speech. I had to have practiced it at least a thousand times by now. It was well thought out and just pitiful enough to ensure that the first thing I came home to wasn’t a fight. I even threw a Winston Churchill quote to soften my dad up. He was always a sucker for Churchill, which I found to be fitting for him. However, in that moment, my carefully planned speech went right out the window. “Ha ha. Well, funny thing actually, school isn’t a problem at all because I got kicked out two months ago. Oops.” Foot, meet mouth.

I can only imagine the colorful language leaving her mouth and it sure as hell ain’t pretty. I hang up before I find out.

Out of all the horrible things I’ve done in my life, I think this is the one that breaks her heart. It’s not the time I stopped letting her bundle me up in excessive amounts of winter clothing to go play outside. It’s not the first time I swore in front of her. It’s not when I stopped leaving my bedroom door open, or the first time I got drunk and called her to come pick me up, or the second time I got drunk and called her to come pick me up. It’s not when I moved 2,000 miles away and didn’t tell her until the week before I left. Hell, it’s not even the time I decided telling your mom you love her was lame.

In the past few hours my mom has called me eight times and left several voice mails. I briefly entertain the thought of listening to them before deciding against it. I know that if I did, I’d probably turn the car around so fast that I’d give myself whiplash, and I have given myself too many pep talks to back out now. Nonetheless I don’t go past the speed limit as I drive down the highway despite me being a lead foot. I tell myself it doesn’t bother me that I just got passed for the umpteenth time today.

The makeshift window/garbage bag and duct tape replacement flaps erratically; Thank you, Chaz.

I drown out the profanities being shouted at me from an old man for driving too slowly with angsty 90s grunge bands. If I’m gonna throw myself a pity party, I may as well do it right.

 

* * *

 

 

**You have [five] unheard messages.**

**First unheard message:** “I cannot believe you did this! You are in so much trouble when you get home.”

**End of message. To delete this message press seven. To reply to it press eight. To save it in the archive, press nine. To hear more options, press zero.**

**Message deleted.**

**Next unheard message:** “Jean Connor Kirschtein, you answer me when I call you! Honestly, you are worse than your father. Je ne peux pas croire que vous avez fait cela! How long has this been going on? A month? Two months? Longer? And you never even thought to tell me? Vous pouvez être telle un trou du cul! You better call me back.”

**End of message. To delete this message press-**

**Message deleted.**

**Next unheard message:** “I see you are still not answering my calls. Well, we’re going to have a long talk, mister. You have got a lot of explaining to do... Drive safely, okay?”

**End of message. To delete this me-**

**Message deleted.**

**Next unheard message:** “I’m sorry I yelled at you. I just- this is all so sudden and I- I’m more upset that you did not tell me than anything else. Why did you pretend everything was okay? I could have helped. Why didn’t you let me help? ...Dieu, je suis tellement stupide! Je ne peux même pas dire quand la vie de mon fils est en train de s'effondrer. Certains mère, je suis... Please call me back, we can talk about this okay? Just please call back. I’m worried about you.”

**End of message. To delete this message, press seven. To reply to it, press eight. To save it in the archive, press nine. To hear more options, press zero.**

**Message skipped.**

**Next unheard message:** “I love you.”

**End of message. To delete this message, press seven. To reply to it, press eight. To save it in the archive, press ni-**

**Message saved.**

**End of messages. To check erased messages, press one nine. To disconnect, press star.**

**Goodbye.**

**Author's Note:**

> I don't speak French. This was a mistake.
> 
> Rating may go up in the future, depends on whether or not I magically develop the skill to write porn with plot. Even though I've got a couple chapters pre-written, updates will be slow, probably once every two or three weeks, and maybe I'll actually be able to keep up some sort of schedule.


End file.
